Moonshine
by Kralia
Summary: Dozer recalls a life overshadowed by his brother. One shot.


AN: I wrote this for the sole reason that it would be just about the only Dozer fic about! Yeah!  
  
That's an awful reason for writing, isn't it?  
  
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MOONSHINE  
  
I was never too bright.  
  
Well, I was around average. Not the best, not the worst. It didn't matter that I wasn't right at the top, so long as I wasn't right at the bottom. I did what I could and that would just have to be good enough.  
  
I was thirteen when that logic left me. Tank was five, and had first started school. He found everything easier than the other kids, and suddenly at home it was Tank this, Tank that. Zee, at eight, was far too sweet to be ignored. I sank slowly into the background, never able to do anything worthwhile like him. I stumbled along in my computer class for four years before I realised I was going nowhere, so I quit.  
  
For a few months I helped the diggers extend Zion. It was tough work, even with machines and helped build up my muscles. I didn't like doing it, though - I didn't want to become one of those mindless diggers who could do nothing useful except, well, dig. So I quit that, too. My father didn't like seeing me stay around the small apartment and he said repeatedly that I should be doing something halfway useful for Zion. So I thought about other things I could study.  
  
Medics caught my eye. I liked helping people, and helping them get better seemed an extension of that. So I joined a medics class.  
  
It was tough, perhaps harder even than computers, but I forced myself to stick with it and get a certificate. Then I'd actually be able to do something useful.  
  
Tank by this time was ten, and doing frighteningly well in computers. I went through a period of resentment, but then decided I might as well be happy for him. So I supported and encouraged him, for all it was worth. He was my little brother after all; we were of the same blood.  
  
Four years later, when I was twenty two, I got my medics certificate. It was a huge relief; now I could finally get on with my life. I spent the last few years working at the main Zion hospital, treating burns, waiting to be noticed. I became known for being the reliable one, the one who didn't mind coming out in the middle of the night to deal with emergency cases. The one who actually cared about the people they treated. The one who made the drink that burned your throat. Dozer's moonshine, they called it.  
  
When I was twenty four, I saw a small ad pinned on the hospital board. "Good all round medic needed on ship Nebuchadnezzar. Ask at ship docking." I asked there and got a meeting with the captain, Ratour. He asked if I knew anything else apart from medics. I replied that I spent four years training in computers, but never got a certificate. He said I could join.  
  
I liked it on ship. Everyone seemed to get on, apart from the odd spat. I helped anyone who got sick or injured, did half of the piloting and occasionally helped Lole, the only other Zion born, on the computer, being operator.  
  
Then, a year later, the plague came.  
  
It attacked mercilessly, probably made by the machines. The first one on ship to fall had symptoms I'd never seen before. I could do nothing as one by one, my companions died. It only attacked the Matrix borns - Lole and I were safe, and so was Morpheus, the second in command. I didn't understand how Morpheus escaped with just a bad cold, but he did. He probably had some freak blood type or something. The three of us returned to Zion, and were put in strict quarantine for six months.  
  
Lole said she wasn't returning to the Neb. At thirty eight, she'd decided to stay in Zion and have a family while she still could. It turned out she'd been engaged all the time I'd known her. Her and her future husband must love each other very much to make their relationship formal - most couples don't bother.  
  
Morpheus and I decided to go back to the Neb with a few Matrix borns from Zion who had agreed to come for just a year or two. He became the captain and I did all the operating. The new people were good, I liked them, but I missed the ones who had died.  
  
Then Trinity was unplugged, by far the youngest on the Neb. Soon, more came, and the older ones finished the time they had agreed to do. It was hard, being forced into doing all the operating when I wasn't too good at it, but I got used to it.  
  
Morpheus approached me one day, talking in the nicest way possible about how I wasn't doing too well on the operating. I felt asking him why he was asking me now, not five years before, but instead I told him about Tank, saying that he excelled at computers and suchlike, and that he could probably join in a couple of years or so. I regretted the words the second they left my mouth. I loved Tank, but somehow I didn't want him coming into my territory. They would all like him and slowly forget about me, just as it had been all those years ago, when Tank was found to be so smart.  
  
Two years later, Tank arrived, and it was exactly as I had foreseen. He was a highly likeable person, chatting away to everyone as if he had known them forever.  
  
I couldn't blame him. I had actually almost missed him and his enthusiasm. Still, I wished that they would remember me, the one who had known them all for so long. I became known as the one who was taken for granted. Almost the Neb pet. No one ever worried about Dozer being lonely or sad.  
  
Ironically, it was Tank who noticed I was down. He came into my cell one night, sat down on the end of my bed and asked me why I was depressed. I was surprised he, or all people had noticed, but I told him about how I felt he had taken my place here. He said he was sorry, that he would talk to the others about it. I wasn't sure if I wanted that, but I agreed and it got somewhat better after that. I got a lot closer to Tank, anyway.  
  
Three years later, Neo was unplugged. The beginning of the end. I remembered when Morpheus was introducing us all. "Tank, and his big brother, Dozer." he said. I forced myself to smile, but the words stung, and old wounds were ripped open. That was all I was, Tank's big brother. Good for nothing apart from curing the odd cold and flying the damn ship.  
  
A few days later, it was breakfast in the mess hall. First time Neo had eaten the SC protein. Mouse was chattering away merrily about runny eggs and tunafish and other things I had never eaten. I decided to tell poor Neo what it really was, because god knows he had to be somewhat confused.  
  
"It's a single cell protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs." I said helpfully.  
  
Mouse glared at me. "It doesn't have 'everything the body needs'" he said, sarcastically, peering at me from under his hat. I flinched and went back to my SC protein, Neo looking perhaps even more confused than he did before.  
  
Strange to think that a few hours after that, Cypher had taken the gun and shot me dead.  
  
I had been standing by the monitors displaying the people still trying to get out of the Matrix on Neo's ill-fated trip to the Oracle. We'd got Cypher out, and Tank had directed them to the same phone.  
  
I had heard the tseeeeew of the plasma gun, and wheeled round, staring at the impossible sight of Cypher shooting my little brother. All rational thoughts and logic left my head. I didn't think of perhaps hiding and getting a weapon of my own to defend myself and the others peacefully lying in their chairs. Only one thought remained in my brain, and that was to get to Cypher before he shot Tank dead.  
  
I yelled out "No!" and lurched towards him. I had taken maybe half a step before I realised what I was doing was crazy, but by that time it was too late. In the split second that it would have taken me to back out, Cypher had twisted the gun around at me.  
  
He torched me before I got within six feet of him, and my life ended. A brief, almost a sting of pain hit me, then the world vanished as the gun did its work. 


End file.
